Nickalas Kedrowitz: Teen gets 100 years for murdering toddler siblings to 'free them from Satan'
Nickalas Kedrowitz, the Indiana teen convicted of smothering his siblings to death, was sentenced by a Ripley County judge on Tuesday. In August, jurors found him guilty of the murders of his siblings. Kedrowitz, 17, was sentenced to two consecutive 50 years in prison for suffocating his 23-month-old half-sister Desiree McCartney and his 11-month-old stepbrother Nathaniel Ritz.
At the time of the murders, Kedrowitz was 13 years old. The crime were committed three months apart. The teen's defense claimed that he was suffering from an untreated mental disorder and hence deserved a lenient sentence. Judge Ryan King, on the other hand, disagreed.
Christina McCartney, Desiree's mother, returned home on May 1, 2017, to discover that her daughter "wasn't breathing right." The girl died at Cincinnati Children's Hospital a few days later, on May 6. Kedrowitz allegedly smothered the infant in order to "set her free to Heaven," according to police. Months later, he was accused of doing the same thing to Nathaniel.
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According to Kedrowitz's mother, the teen previously mutilated a kitten, and a relative compared his wrath to that of the Incredible Hulk. After Nathaniel died, Kedrowitz admitted to the crimes, according to investigators.
Ripley County prosecutor Ric Hertel claimed, "There were several remarks that were made to police about freeing the siblings from some sort of hell."
Christina McCartney believes her son's talk of "hell" had something to do with his stepfather, who was living with the family at the time. "He witnessed him being mean to the babies. That he pushed them down on purpose. He would lock them up in the bedroom to try to shut them up. He painted a pretty bad picture. As a mom, that’s hard to swallow that was going on, and I didn’t know," McCartney stated.
Despite the allegations made by McCartney, no charges have been brought against McCartney's boyfriend.
Kerdowitz was charged as an adult and entered a no guilty plea. Prosecutors claimed he was guilty for both of the murders. In order to justify the century-long sentence, Hertel stressed the length of time between the murders. Hertel said, "This wasn’t some sort of heat of passion, one killing and then minutes or hours or even days later. We’re talking months here, so we think that the consecutive part of the sentence was warranted and appropriate in this circumstance."